Maria van Veldhuizen

Maria is a PlanAdapt Fellow, based in Vienna, Austria.

Maria has over eight years of experience in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Her interests include energy, agriculture, biodiversity, gender, subnational climate action, and climate finance, and she most enjoys projects in which those issues overlap. She also enjoys thinking about and working with new approaches to governance – strategic foresight, scenario building, experimentation, adaptive planning etc.

Maria has experience in developing project proposals, authoring studies and strategies, providing analysis, organizing online courses, and knowledge brokering. She has worked with international organisations including the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the World Bank, the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).

Maria’s recent publications include several reports on gender equality in the energy sector, developed with the Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition (GWNET) for the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), the World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), and the OSCE. She is the facilitator of the Elevating the Voices of Women in Agriculture Council, convened by the Ban Ki-Moon Centre for Global Citizens. She is also part of an expert roster that provides ad-hoc strategic advice to the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Maria holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management, granted jointly by Central European University, the University of Lund and the University of Manchester. She has lived in eight different countries and speaks Dutch, English, German, French and Spanish.

For more info, see Maria’s LinkedIn page.